Posts Tagged Andrei Tarkovsky

Solaris (1972)

June 12, 2009 at 8:41 am · Filed under It's ok ·Tagged

A ponderous film. Tarkovsky gives plenty of ponder time. Cus there’s never very much plot or action-narrative going on.

Tarkovsky’s beginnings are always visually compelling: here we start with greening and blueing nature, the earth exhaling mists, dandelions puffing off white heads, cuckoos, saturations of wateriness, miracle-seeming rain through sun, horses, humming bees; it all creates the effect of the Earth – planet earth that is – being a living being, a sumptuous sensual marvel.

At 40 minutes we finally lift off into Space; with minimal special effects we get transported into the strange and estranged world of Solaris ocean, somewhere distinctively Not-Earth.

Kris – the psychologist – has been rocketed up to find out what strange goings on have been going on. No space-suit.  None of that astronaut malarkey. He turns up in black leather jacket and tight fitting leggings.

On board the space-satelite is Snow – or “Snout” as it’s said in Russian; he’s also wearing a leather jacket (brown) and Sartorious;  he’s got the white jacket of a nutty Scientist on; Gilbarian has already topped himself. “This is all meaningless” he’s saying posthumously to video camera; but “it’s not madness, it has to do with conscience”.

The Solaris Ocean – being a thinking substance – has been emanating “disturbances”, materialising thoughts. Kris is soon having in existence his dead wife Hari (she killed herself 10 years ago) “Do you love me?” she’s immediately asking Kris. “Don’t say silly things” he replies. But it’s not silly. Turns out he’s resurrecting,or more precisely, replicating, her into life with (his) love.

“Perhaps we’re here to perceive, for the first time,  humans as a purpose for love“  – which seems to be one of the central messages of the film.

“What Man needs is man” seems to be another message. Not explorations into Deep Outer Space “out there” – but the Deep Inner Space within what it is to feel and be an earthly being.

Another message could be: “We need secrets to preserve simple human truths. The secrets of happiness, death, love” In other words there have to be necessary moral limitations to rational scientific “discovery”.

On some critics lists this one of the best Sci-Fi films ever made. Probably cus of it’s seriously committed tone, its exploration of ideas rather than robots blowing one another up. And of course you’ve got all of Tarkovsky’s spiritual iconery: beautifully seraphic women levitating like angels, sonerous use of J.S Bach, the watery world of lakes, rain, mists, the slow lingering of the camera searching significances of the natural world, sudden illuminations of light…etc blah….

But i got bored. Again. There’s always times in Tarkovsky’s films when i’m profoundly bored, and fast-forwarding through the many slow bits, the repetitive bits, the dead bits.

You’ll have to be in a state of devout meditative concentration – for 2 hours! – to watch this. Believing it to be seriously meaningful, spiritually significant.

I don’t have that belief anymore about Tarkovsky. Think i’d prefer to meditate on and in my own world. Listen to those birds outside my bedroom window.

Dir: Andrei Tarkovsky, Russia

6/10

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Stalker (1979)

December 26, 2008 at 11:34 am · Filed under Tedious ·Tagged

Black dogs lurching about, a recurring motif in Tarkovsky. Part of the Tarkovsky trademark. As is wateriness. Wetness. When you watch a Tarkovsky film you feel like you ought to be under an umbrella. Or maybe wearing a black raincoat, zipped right up, hood pulled right over.

You won’t want to go anywhere cus it’s teeming with rain. You’ll have to stay put, be still, slow yourself right down, become snail-like. Yes, being snailish is definitely the way to be when watching Tarkovsky: slipping slowly, and sliding furtively about. Snails gorge themselves on rain.

I don’t think i like Tarkovsky’s films that much. They certainly don’t make you feel happy (he eschewed personal “happiness” apparently as being too self-indulgent, and preferred spiritual “seriousness”)

This film will make you miserable. What a miserable thing it is to be a wretched human life on this wretched earth, seems to be the gloom-laden message. Even when you are granted the fulfillment of your most cherished desire, “the desire that has made you suffer the most” it won’t give you ultimate fulfillment.

We have to suffer to be fully human : “If there were no sorrow in our life’s, it wouldn’t be better – it’d be worse. Because then there’d be no happiness either“.

You get to suffer a lot watching Tarkovsky. His films are one long sufferance. There’s no humour. No lightness of being. It’s all grave and weighed down by gloomy gravitas. There’s no sex. Not much romance. Not much warmth.

It’s a cinema of deprivation; all your usual expectations about films exciting your desires or pleasuring you are deliberately denied, thwarted, ended.

So this is how it goes in this film:

There’s black and white oppressive gloom to begin with. Then off to The Zone for 3 men: The Writer, The Scientist, The Stalker. To mooch and mope about in misty murkiness. The camera moves slowly from afar near to, coming towards. A cuckoo echos around. Palpable silencing going on in the green grass of meadow. More standing around. Talking in obscure abstract disconnecting ways. Straight ahead is no good. Going or getting anywhere is no good. The long way round is better.

“The Zone is at each moment just as we’ve made it by our state of mind. The Zone lets thro all those who’ve lost all hope, not good or bad – but the wretched“

Wretched and wet. Going thro long tunnels. The drip drip dripping of water. Raining inside. Flowing of, traipsing through, water. Maybe there’s a reason for so much water. Maybe it’s this:

“When a man is born, he is soft and pliable. When he dies he is strong and hard. When a tree grows it is soft and pliable. But when it’s dry and hard it dies. Hardness and strength are deaths companions. Flexibility and softness are the embodiment of life. That which has become hard will not triumph.”

This is probably the only idea i’ll take with from this film. To be as fluid and flexible, soft and yielding as water is to be life-giving. What we normally think as strong – hardness – is too fixed, too rigid. What makes you harder in life doesn’t give you life. It kills you.

The film goes on for 2 1/2  very long hours. Half way through you might feel like drowning yourself. I itched inside myself to get away from it, to be released from it’s interminable grimy grim grip. I thought to myself: this is definitely the last time i’ll watch this. No more. I’ve seen it 3 times now and each time it’s had the same effect: made me feel depressed.

Another Tarkovsky film I’ll be taping over. Thank God. Praise the Lord.

Dir: Andrei Tarkovsky, Russia

4/10

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Nostalgia (1983)

December 15, 2008 at 5:17 pm · Filed under Good ·Tagged , ,

I often only watch Tarkovsky films for 20 minutes or so. Like i might be kneeling down in church at the altar. Sometimes my soul resists the readiness to be prayerful that these films demand.

The opening scenes of this film take you beautifully into Church Tarkovsky.

A VW beettle loops around in the mist. “I’m tired of seeing these sickeningly beautiful sights” says gloomy poet-in-exile Andrei. (i’ve understood – and sometimes even agreed – with that thought) “I want nothing more just for myself” he says (i’ve had that thought too)

Next is a scene in church which introduces you to Domiziana Giordano’s wonderous long hair (as you can see in pic) “Pre-Raphelite” i think you’d call it. I may have watched this scene at least a dozen times – simply to amaze at her maze of rivulets. Truly visionary (yes, i can be quite shallow sometimes)

“You want to be happy but there are more important things” says ferrety-looking religious person to her. Yes, like self-sacrifice. And having babies. Being a Mother (Mary)

Next, we see starlings flocking out of a statue of the Virgin Mary, their white feathers falling softly over melting candles. I don’t know what it means, but it looks visionary (almost as wonderful as Lady Dom’s hair)

We’re 13 minutes in. You could stop here. Or maybe you could bear to watch (meditate) a while longer.

Loads of raining is going to be happening. If you’re into rain you have to watch Tarkovsky. Nobody does more rain, or wetter rain, or better rain. He makes rain seem like a being with it’s own soul.

Rain that gurgles and splurts, teems and torrents, pings and pelts.  Rain that cascades off coloured glass bottles in a light shower of crystaline shards. Rain that gets to somewhere within you feel glad to be so unhappy about.

(Tarkovsky is The Rain Man)

Andrei opens hotel bedroom window. Rain is streaming down. He sits on bed in dark. Going nostalgic again. Slow-mo sepia flashbacks. Cascading of rain. Barking of dog. Camera staying still. Creaking door. Alsatian dog comes in, lies down by bed. A bottle rolls across echoey floor. Rain still rin tin-tinning down. An Epiphany just happened.

Most scenes seem evocative of spiritual illumination in Tarkovsky films.

So thats half an hour up. I’d switch off now. That’s more than enough epiphany to be going on with.

But there’s still another hour and a half to go. It’ll carry on raining. A mad man (Erland Josephson) will be enlisting himself to Save the World. And recruiting Andrei to “cross the water with a lighted candle“  (this scene goes on in one long continuous take for 9 long minutes) Everywhere will continue to be very wet.

To be honest, a Russian poets gloomy nostalgic melancholy for his motherland isn’t the most riveting thing to watch. And he must be pretty depressed to be turning down the lovely romantic overtures of gorgeous Lady Dom. “He’s sad because he’s in love” says hotel manager. “His mind is on other things” she says forlornly.

He’s in love with his own longing. To be miserable. Wallowing in homesick ruminations, yearning for elsewhere that isn’t here (in Italy) wishing to be back with his wife and kids, his mother, his dog, his dacha, his Russia.

It isn’t remotely entertaining. It isn’t meant to be.

But it’ll probably sink into the deepest most depths of your soul.

Like music does. Like rain.

Dir: Andrei Tarkovsky, Russia

7/10

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Andrei Rublev (1966)

December 11, 2008 at 1:47 pm · Filed under Tedious ·Tagged

One of the great (est) films. Critics revere it (“solemn, magnificent, astounding”) (But do many of them actually like it? Hmm, i wonder)

I found it hard work (as in laborious). Was whizzing thro with finger on fast forward so as to get the going over and working done with. The heavy density, weightiness, opaque mysticism, all felt like a burden too onerous for my lazy consciousness to carry (for 3 hours)

It evokes 14th century medieval Russia as strangely authentic, as un-now, with a kind of austere historical otherness.

There’s far more action than other Tarkovsky films, but it’s often jumbled up action: vertiginous flight in a hot-air balloon – that crashes; naked pagans worshipping, bonfiring, love-making in dark forests; ransacking and pillaging Tartars; the casting of a great bell. Difficult to make coherent narrative sense of the multiplicity of what is going on.

There’s typically much turgid Tarkovsky too; slow, and serious, and slow, and slower, and seriouser; ponderous religious meanderings; austere monks in black cowls cast inside gloomy moods of pious melancholy (see pic above) reciting from scripture, pontificating about sin, faith, evil, and other dreary Christian concepts.

With Tarkovsky you’ll always get unforgettable “visions” – in this film there’s his usual beauty juxtaposed with casual cruelty: the hearing of rain, the seeing of rain; the snowing of snow in the middle of a cathedral; floaty candle-lit boats; horse tumbling in grass in slow-mo, or horses in rain by river, or horse shot down a stairs; a jester having his head bounced off a tree; torture at the rack.

But I got pretty bored by it really. Which i don’t like to admit to – but it’s true.

Despite all the “magnificent solemnity” and the visual poetry and the astonishing imagery and the spiritual evokery -  it all comes across as  too much hokery pokery. Too much anyway. Too much of a grind.

I’m going to do something i never thought i’d ever do to a Tarkovky film – something almost tantamount to sacrilege.

I’m going to tape over it.

Dir: Andrei Tarkovsky, Russia

5/10

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Ivan’s Childhood (1962)

November 20, 2008 at 5:36 pm · Filed under It's ok ·Tagged

Think it’s about time i tackled old Andrei, made my ascent up Mount Tarkovsky.

And this film – his first – is probably the least difficult one to climb; there’s a relatively coherent narrative, and not arduously long.

Opening with cuckoo-cooing, butterflies, a meadow, a sandy beach. Ivan’s Childhood was idyllic when mama was around.

You could look down deep dark wells for stars.

Moments later Ivan has become a 12 year old orphaned boy soldier – childhood beauty brutalized by war.

The abiding memory of this film has been the silver birch forest. In and out and around the silver birches virgin doctor Masha and Leonid go. A love interlude. (It gets the best use of silver birch award)

Precipitously hanging, fragile. Love hasn’t got long to be happening. “Everything happens all of a sudden“. Including your death. Your ordinary death.

Masha and Leonid won’t live much longer.

There’s always going to be great photography in a Tarkovsky film

Sitting in the back of an applecart with your little sister in the rain. Apples fall out of the back scattering onto sand. Horses munch on them.

Flares fizzle into the dark water

Chasing along the shore after sister is Ivan.

But he’s already dead.

Unlikely to watch this film again. The few memorable images I’ve posted are probably all that needs to remain.

It’s not particularly engaging; as a war movie, or as a character drama, or even as the poetic evocation of the spiritual going on in Tarkovsky’s head.

One down – six to go

Dir: Andrei Tarkovsky, Russia

6.5/10 (I’m probably slightly over-rating this film cus it’s Tarkovsky)

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